Sunday, December 19, 2010

PDF's are Portable Document Files. They open consistently across different platforms (mac vs pc vs linux etc). As a nice bonus they don't take up much space, so can be safely e-mailed and linked.

PDFs can be generated in any size. For example, when I am working on a newspaper layout I save my files as tabloid sized pdfs. If I am sending off a flyer, its 8x10 etc. I've even seen photographers send proofs as pdfs since most users won't know how to resize and print their own copies.

But why would an average user want pdfs?

Mostly to save space.

Are you a "printer?" Do you print every confirmation screen? Do you have stacks of Amazon e-mailed invoices? Do yourself a favor and install a pdf creator. You can save these files as pdfs in a folder and not have to worry about toppling mountains with all your print outs.

http://www.cutepdf.com/ is a free pdf printer. Instead of clicking "File > Print > Picking your normal printer" you click CutePDF as your printer. It goes through all the steps as if it were physically printing your document but in the end saves the file as a pdf instead. There is a paid version of this tool on the website so make sure to pick the freeware version instead.

http://pdfmyurl.com/ has a great url. It does exactly what the title implies - you copy and paste a url and let it generate the rest. This is great for saving images of great deals or just for backing up/printing posts on your blog. Instead of worrying about how it looks when you print (and waste ink, paper in the process) just print as a pdf and see how you like it, then if you're ready for a hard copy print that pdf on your real printer.

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In decluttering news I eBayed an unused purse from last summer and craigslisted this pan. If it were larger I would have kept it forever but it turns out 8 inches isn't good for anything but making one burger :P